July 25, 2008My week of reading

So it’s Friday night, my head has been buzzing all week with tangled thoughts and readings on Catholicism and “World Youth Day”, feminism and body image issues, race and white privilege, aging and misogyny, and running through all of these the issues of the personal and the political, and the compulsion to be ‘nice’, to be ‘fair’…and a headcold.

So because it’s cold, because I’m tired, because the cold is making me a little ‘stupid’, because others have written about these things before, and better, because other people are discussing things in really cool ways, tonights post is links to other cooler writers:

In this post, tigtog, of Hoyden About Town blogs way more articulately than I (in fact I cannot even describe what the post is about articulately tonight) issues connected with discussions surrounding plastic surgery and body image: how it gets reduced to *oh, silly woman! doesn’t understand most men don’t want *fake women*’…which, well, what explains the massive commercial success of porn and FHM then? And also maybe we’re not always motivated by what “most men say they want” or what “most men DO want”….AND that (even supposing we’re all hetero) it isn’t just about *you* and *me* or *men* and the individual woman, it’s about real social pressures on women, real issues of visibility, economics, pressures in the workforce, youthfulness as currency etc etc etc…anyway, where this stuff has been a big ole swampy soup in my head of late, causing my every attempt to articulate it to sound like “Grggaaaggrrrlummmphhhtppphhhtriick”, tigtog manages a powerful and incisive post…and the comments are worth following through as people begin to unravel a little more of what’s at work here.

Tigtog comes through again with Drongo Day at HAT: Disengenuous Troll of the Week, and cos I love a good arse kicking of any man who starts with the whole “Oh, PLEASE stop your whining ladies, it’s BIOLOGY!”, I laughed my arse off at the responses from commenters. I don’t in fact know enough about biology to come up with counter examples, but these people rallied beautifully.

Stephanie, a guest poster, has been getting conversation started with her post The Privilege in your pocket: A Manifesto. This is a wonderfully articulate post and rather than butcher it by trying to describe it in this cold-induced-fog, I will just say: PLEASE go read this…aaaand from Stephanie, I borrow the following link:

It’s been a happy week of reading for me. Here’s to hoping more people figure out how not to be a dick. Sam in the City obviously has not. If you’re up for some horrendous misogyny may I recommend Sam’s delightful musings on “The Third Date Rule” (???). It’s too disgusting for me to bother using my words on…I dunno. Go. Read. If enough of us despise her maybe her head will explose or something. One can hope.